Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"Safe abortion... Safe abortion... Dead!" Members of the Feminist League for Agitation Propaganda mostly dressed up in ball gowns race around a circle in front of the Westin Hotel in Halifax, playing a modified version of the game "Duck, Duck, Goose." ...

"My body's nobody's body but mine, you run own body, let me run mine" sing FLAP participants during the demonstration.

I can't believe that we made the sidebar on Jill Stanek's blog! This is the group that gathered outside the Westin Hotel to protest our fundraising dinner on Saturday, April 24. Michael Coren, the guest speaker, gave a talk entitled "Journalist for Life". Michael would have spoken to the protestors, but time did not allow. I wish he had had more time, because he is unafraid to confront anyone on any issue, and he has the arguments to run rings around them.

And Michael has already responded within minutes of being apprised of the article. Read his sharp response here

Update: Wednesday, April 28 - I have posted 3 comments on the Halifax MediaCoop site, none of which has been published. So far, they have only allowed one comment that supported the protestors, of course. Such fair coverage of the issue.

I think that we should challenge feminists on the issue of why they are always out protesting pro-life events, but they never show up to condemn the mistreatment of women in other cultures. For example, feminists have nothing to say about female circumcision practised by certain Muslims, they don't speak up about coerced abortions on Chinese women. They only seem to rally for what matters to them, their sexual license. In reality, they are not true feminists, who would be advocating for real women's rights, they simply want sexual freedom for themselves.

Following a conversation with one of my daughters, she emailed me and suggested that I blog about what we discussed. Well, several days have passed; in that time, I have been part of a team organizing a fundraising dinner here in Halifax with guest speaker Michael Coren. The weekend was a wild busy one, with flight glitches, dinner guest glitches, but it all worked out in the end. The banquet was great, Michael is an exceptional guest speaker (anyone considering inviting him to speak should not delay), we made some much-needed money for Campaign Life Coalition, and I have managed to continue my reading of an interesting, if depressing, book called Fighting for Life by Father Paul Marx.

So back to the topic of our phone conversation. Elena and I were talking about the changes in the Mass since Vatican II and I told her of my attending a "house Mass" in a friend's apartment. This was celebrated around a coffee table (think young working people with little furniture) with most of us sitting on the floor, the bread for Communion was a loaf I had baked (leavened bread, not permitted in actuality), the celebrant was a priest theologian from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto. Did I know that we were breaking liturgical rules? no, I didn't have a clue. We thought it was "way cool", the Mass was being made personal, and you know we really did think we were moving into a richer spirituality.

I do remember wondering how to square all of this with the fact that one friend was sleeping with a Jesuit seminarian (she was not his only partner) as he was trying to sort out his vocation. You see, this was the early 70's and the Church was turned upside-down by the new thinking that came out of Vatican II. Sadly, this was not at all the intention of Pope John XXIII, when he called for a rejuvenation of the Church by the Holy Spirit, but there were plenty of liberal theologians, priests and nuns who jumped on this and used it for their own purposes. Now in hind-sight, we can see that most of those dissident people have left the Church, and those who remain holding to this liberal mind-set are precisely the ones giving the Church such trouble today. They are the ones calling for the abolition of celibacy to cure the sex scandals (as if getting married will cure a homosexual of his proclivities), they are the sisters who have abandoned the traditional way of life of the convent and practise New Age prayer methods. Here in this diocese, we have one group of nuns who offer retreats with the theme of communing with nature; no mention of God or His Son.

Not everyone went this way, however. I remember one young woman at this Mass who is now a professed laywoman at Madonna House Apostolate; there was one young couple, newly married, who are still married with three grown daughters, one of whom is a member of Catholics for Choice (you can't win them all), the friend with the seminarian boyfriend has gone who knows where, the seminarian married someone else and I am pretty sure is probably divorced now and remarried. Or perhaps he turned gay, he was pretty promiscuous.

I don't know where the priest is now, and I have no interest in finding out. Myself, I survived this tempest and married a few years afterwards, to a young Brit who was also being tossed around by the waves of dissent within the Church. We were fortunate enough to be married by an orthodox priest from Madonna House, who told us that our salvation was to be worked out through each other, and I recall him asking us in our wedding ceremony if we would accept any children that God might send us. That was the only reference to being open to life, there had been no discussion of this prior to marriage and any decision about having children and using contraception was left entirely up to us to decide. There was no advice given us from any quarter in this regard.

Our first year of marriage was spent in Africa, teaching in Malawi, and our first child was born there. Naively unaware that the Church had anything relevant to say about family life and children, we made our own decisions and chose a method of contraception in order not to have a second child too soon afterwards. It wasn't until about a year later, that I realised this didn't feel right and I was concerned about the health effects of artificial contraception, and we tried to follow the rhythm method. We had another child, while Nick was a student, but this was our middle daughter who was, by far, the easiest baby - our "student bonus" as Nick liked to call her. We couldn't believe she actually put herself to sleep without needing to be rocked!

It took getting involved with a Catholic charismatic group in Ottawa to get us to look at NFP (natural family planning). Most of the couples were using the Billings or the Serena method and it was their example that brought us along. We didn't feel inclined to have more children, as Nick was a PhD student and I was a stay-at-home mom, so finances were always tight. We didn't see how we could have more children as sometimes we couldn't even afford to run the car. But an unexpected pregnancy that ended in miscarriage made me realise that I wanted another baby. There followed another miscarriage, which ended my desire for more children as it was rather traumatic. But a few years later, as I was 34 years old, I felt "broody" and actually felt that God wanted us to have another child. The subsequent miscarriage was extremely painful emotionally, plus frightening physically as I hemorrhaged and went into shock. And I couldn't understand why God would allow this child to die when I had felt so strongly that I was to have this baby.

I recall talking to Father Sharkey at Madonna House the next summer and told him about this experience. He so very kindly told me that I did indeed "have this child"; he was just not with us in this world. That brought home to me a sense of the communion of saints, that my three miscarried children were actually somewhere and I would meet them some day. What a blessing that conversation was.

So now I was 35 years old and feeling my biological clock ticking. A friend referred me to a wonderful pro-life doctor in Ottawa and he advised us to consider adopting a child from abroad. He said that I was high-risk, having miscarried three times and now being 35 years old. But he said he would check for a hidden infection in my uterus in case that was causing the miscarriages. I didn't realise then that this type of infection is the type that causes women who have had abortions to become sterile. Each miscarriage had been resolved with a D&C, which is similar to the clean-up after a suction abortion and can cause lasting damage to the uterus.

To cut a long story short, he advised me to wait six weeks for the results of the tests and his parting words were "don't get pregnant this month". Hah, when I returned to see him in January, I was embarrassed because I knew I was pregnant. Our NFP efforts were not always successful. This lovely old doctor smiled and said "in eight months, you will have a beautiful little baby".

Given my history of miscarriages, I was apprehensive that I would miscarry again. A neighbour, whom I did not know very well, knew I was pregnant and she came over with a litany to St. Theresa of Lisieux. She told me to pray the Litany for nine days and that, at the end, I would receive a rose or roses or would smell them, and that would be a sign that this child would be okay. She assured me that she knew it would work out. I know now that she was praying for the baby too.

This was February. If you know Ottawa, February is the middle of winter with snow on the ground and freezing temperatures. I had just finished the Litany that morning, opened the door to get the mail from the box, and was overwhelmed by the smell of roses. I looked everywhere to see where it was coming from and, believe me, there could be no roses outside on that day. I even thought perhaps it was a new Bounce scent but there were no dryer vents near our door so that wasn't possible. It took me a few minutes to realise this was a sign from heaven that the pregnancy was going to continue and that this baby was going to make it. I had a deep sense of God's doing something special with this pregnancy. Our other girls at this point were 7 and 10 years old.

Enter baby Martha. She has been marked by God from birth, with a fierce independence as well as bright red hair. Throughout her early years, God placed important people, all women, in her life who taught her about God. At the age of three, her pre-school teacher introduced her to Jesus and the concept of the Rapture. While playing outside one day, Mary Jane asked Martha why she wasn't playing but was looking up at the sky. Martha replied that she was waiting for the Rapture! At age six, Kathy at the Veritas bookstore spent many hours with Martha telling her about the saints and the spiritual life, seeds that were planted and grew deep. This child was being prepared for something.

And, at the age of 21, she went to Boston to join the Sisters of Divine Mercy. This was a short period, only three months, and she returned home distraught and in a lot of pain as she thought perhaps she didn't have a religious vocation. But then, at age 22, she met up with Father Roberto Donato and the Franciscans of Halifax, a newly founded order of sisters and brothers right in her own home city. She has been with them for two years now, and I am sure that it is not a bed of roses, but she is at peace and she is working out her life according to how she thinks God is calling her.

So what does all this mean? Last Sunday, our parish priest talked about his own call to the priesthood and how God took him off his course in medical school to enter the seminary. He encouraged the congregation to foster an atmosphere in the family that would allow for the growth of vocations to the religious life. His sermon was very good, but I kept thinking that, when people use contraception and don't have the children God wants for them to have, where are those vocations going to come from?

Future generations will wonder why so many Catholic bishops and priests in the West didn't see contraception as a seminal evil and the chief cause of the Church's swift decline. Australia, like the U.S.A., seems to have spawned bishops who think you can fill seminaries and novitiates with the children of contracepting or sterilized parents. - Fighting for Life, by Father Paul Marx

I don't have the stats here, but I am pretty sure that most vocations come from families that have more than two children. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally vocations will only stir in the hearts of children who are encouraged to be generous with their lives. Unfortunately, the current small family is more concerned with their children's education and career and fulfilment than with their religious vocation. And, if we pamper our children and teach them to look after #1 first, how can they possibly answer a call that asks them to put themselves second?

I have taken a long time to get to my initial thought on this, which is that if we want to raise children for the Kingdom and perhaps have some of those kids become leaders for others, then we have to be willing to perhaps have more kids than we planned. God needs human material to work with and it is moms and dads who can provide that crop. Not every family has to be a huge whopping one as in the past, but there is something very selfish and self-seeking about the small family that limits itself to only two on purpose.

I had no plans to have a lot of children, I am not particularly gifted in mothering skills, but it is obvious to me that God wanted someone else in our family and He had to open our hearts to receive that person. And what a blessing she has been.

Friday, April 23, 2010

This post may be a rambling series of thoughts as I am trying to unscramble a lot of emotions here. But, underneath them all, something keeps bugging me that it just isn't right.

Flash back to Wednesday morning, Rosary walk at the hospital, this is something I always go to, it is only half an hour and about five or six of us gather together to pray for those involved in abortion in the hospitals in front of us. Our prayer intention is specifically that those involved in the "culture of death" would be open to the grace of conversion and would turn and serve the "culture of life".

This Wednesday, we were joined by two couples from Digby who had come to find out what we do because they are going to start a Rosary walk outside the hospital in Kentville. This is impressive, because Digby is a three-hour drive away and I think it wonderful that they drove in the day before, stayed overnight, just to come and pray with us for half an hour. One man said, "when you want to start something, you have to go to someone who is already doing it, in order to find out how you should do it." Take a page out of his book, Julie.

After our prayer time, we stayed briefly to chat and one of the people said they had met with a priest the day before, who told these four people that there were NO abortions done at the Victoria General Hospital, that the only abortions done were at the Grace Maternity and at the IWK Children's Hospital. This is false information and, when I got home, I contacted the director of Campaign Life Coalition to let her know and to see how we should correct this well-meaning, but badly-informed priest. This set off a series of emails, including my contacting someone who works in the hospital who provided me with proof of abortions being done there along with names of people I could speak to. But the end result was that the priest got upset with us all, made the remark that it doesn't matter where the abortions are done, and that people don't like the pro-life groups because they are too "radical". He then related how he had spent the day with a 79-year-old woman who was dying and was telling him of her cynicism about God due to a life of rejection and sexual abuse. The priest concluded that abortion is not the only issue, there are many other issues that are crying out for attention. He then asked that his name be taken off our email newsletter list.

None of what he said can be denied. But what is niggling away at me is that this is how the "seamless garment" theology is transmitted to people; by making them feel that the pro-life cause should not be given more priority than other causes; that those who feel adamantly about "pro-life" issues are alienating people with their approach; that we should scale back and present ourselves in kinder terms in order to win converts.

Yes, we should be charitable, that is true. However, when we are asked to tone down our words or to soften our approach, I sense that what is going on is that the person really is uncomfortable with the issue of abortion and they are giving themselves an excuse for not getting involved.

Yes, there are many issues that call out for attention. However, the pro-life issue is not being presented anywhere by anyone except for those of us who are being called "too radical". Abortion is not being spoken about in our churches, our clergy and ministers are not addressing the topic, very few of our clergy will even attend a single pro-life event, even something as innocuous as a fund-raising dinner. So, while the subject of clergy abuse is being spoken about in plenty of churches, while Development and Peace gets to make a presentation about poverty in the Third World, the pro-life cause is put on the back burner and kept mum.

People seem to think that, by simply saying pro-lifers are too radical and that there are other issues, they have somehow done their bit for pro-life. They think that the personal conviction that life is sacred is enough; and that anyone who wants to do more is just dragging this issue out yet again, when nothing can be done about it. And so, once again, the pro-life issue is shelved and those who shelve it actually think they have given it enough attention.

I used to think like that; while being pro-life in thought, I didn't give too much more attention to it and didn't really want to attend any pro-life events. And I am not saying that everyone has to. People are called to different things and I really do believe that you should work on that which captures your heart; otherwise your efforts and enthusiasm will wane and what is the point of that?

But even those who don't want to espouse the cause of pro-life should pay attention to some effects of the abortion holocaust upon our society. Because abortion has and is affecting all of us, even if we don't know it.

I have heard abortion compared to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Who could have foretold the effects of that single event? Did anyone anticipate the radioactive fall-out that would affect people for generations to come? Did anyone realise how many people would die long painful deaths from cancers caused by the explosion and that would entail providing medical care for those people?

The same is true for abortion. We are only beginning to see that the act of abortion itself is only the tip of the iceberg. Psychologists are admitting that women are scarred in many ways, not just physical, from abortion; that many women come to them as patients who would not be there if they had not had abortions. Many women are now dependent upon drugs to control depression, to curb insomnia, to control mood swings; the numbers of women dependent upon drugs after abortion is staggering. And then there is suicide. How many women have killed themselves because they simply could not forgive themselves for having an abortion? Is their death even recognized as being attributable to that abortion? How many women have subsequent premature babies because of the abortion they had earlier? How many women cannot conceive now because of an abortion?

The list goes on and on; the children of post-abortive women suffer from their mother's act as well; Dr. Philip Ney calls this the "survivor syndrome"; children often feel guilty that they are alive, when their brother or sister was not given that opportunity.

What is this costing our medical system? If we knew the financial cost of the effects of abortion, surely governments would not be so eager to fund abortion in the first place. And there is the demographic issue: in countries where we are not even replacing ourselves with children, abortion is killing off entire cultures.

So, for those who think that abortion is just one issue like other just causes, I would challenge them to think a little deeper. The mushroom cloud of the abortion holocaust hangs over our society, unseen by most, yet it is wreaking damage upon absolutely everyone, because it is undermining the very soul of our society.

Abortion is the cutting edge, the initial wedge, for "the new ethic." It is the tip of the iceberg, in the proposed revision of what it means to be human. Despite all the rhetoric about abortion being a matter of private morality, it has far-reaching public impliciations. If what we are interested in is a stop-gap measure, then abortion seems reasonable. If what we desire are results, then abortion seems like an answer. But it is an option that does not exist in a vacuum, for it involves the sacrifice of not only the unborn child but a way of life, an entire ethic. As with the seamless robe of Christ, to unloose but one thread of its fabric is to evenually unloose it all.- Who Broke the Baby, by Jean Staker Garton, 1998

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

However, there really is no comparison between pro-life activism and pro-choice activism. In the first, pro-lifers may try to stop women from having abortions; but in this case, the woman's life is not in question. With pro-choice activism, someone always dies, i.e. the baby or fetus if you prefer to call the unborn that.

Comparing a woman's choice to have an abortion with a woman choosing to carry her baby to term is comparing apples to oranges. The woman does not forfeit her life if she goes to term; but with an abortion, the baby always loses its life. There is no comparison at all.

Joyce is clutching at straws; in fact, the pro-choice feminists are all clutching at straws as their arguments are being demolished by the medical evidence about the unborn. The more we learn about development of life in the womb, the more insisting on a woman's right to choose abortion is looking like fanaticism. Actually, the face of pro-choice advocates is looking older as the young realise being pro-choice means they would actually have to support their mother's choice to kill them. This issue may indeed end with one generation, as abortion is the ultimate negative statement about the next generation.

Friday, April 16, 2010

In light of recent events, Arthur and her cronies would be wise to examine a 1995 article written by well-known American feminist, Naomi Wolf. She told the Sisterhood that if they continued to deny the humanity of the fetus in their pro-abortion arguments, they stand in jeopardy of losing their souls and "risk becoming precisely what our critics charge us with being: callous, selfish and casually destructive men and women who share a cheapened view of human life."

Thursday, April 15, 2010

I read Joyce Arthur's response to Kelly McParland's oped in the National Post and I think it should be quoted in its entirety. Such thinking needs to be seen in full in order to see the motivation behind such statements:

Kelly McParland makes the common mistake of trying to critique the pro-choice viewpoint through an anti-choice lens. He argues that to support a woman's right to choose, "you have to believe that a fetus is not human in the moral sense."

This is incorrect. The pro-choice view is woman-focused, and we take no view on the fetus (or should not). The status and moral value of the fetus is moot because it's a matter of subjective personal opinion, and the only opinion that counts is the pregnant woman's.

No one wants to see abortions done for reasons of sex selection. But most pro-choice people do not want to ban the practice because that means removing personal autonomy in favour of society's values. Being pro-choice means supporting women's choices even when we don't agree with them -- the hallmark of a truly free and democratic society.

Abortion is being scapegoated here. It's not abortion that leads to the problem of skewed sex ratios in China, India or even Canada. It's the low status of women, as well as the Indian dowry practice, and the Chinese custom of passing the family line through the son.

Instead of trying to ban sex-selection abortion, governments should focus on education campaigns to spark a cultural shift, introduce economic incentives to have daughters and abolish discriminatory laws and policies that lead families to favour boys over girls.-Joyce Arthur, co-ordinator, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, Vancouver.

"The status and moral value of the fetus is moot because it's a matter of subjective personal opinion, and the only opinion that counts is the pregnant woman's."The unborn child has no significance for Ms Arthur whatsoever. All that matters is the woman, the logical position of relative ethics.

"Being pro-choice means supporting women's choices even when we don't agree with them -- the hallmark of a truly free and democratic society."How would one oppose anything that you consider wrong then? Surely this thinking means that you must accept that each person decides right and wrong for themselves, and not just in the issue of abortion.

"Abortion is being scapegoated here."I have never heard of an issue being a scapegoat before, I thought people were scapegoats, but then anything is possible when abortion is sacramentalized.

"introduce economic incentives to have daughters"? Is Arthur supporting sex-selection abortion of boys to correct the balance? She seems to imply that people can decide which sex of child to have, perhaps she just used bad wording.

In all fairness, I have to say she does make a good point when she talks about the "skewed sex ratios" being due to the cultural preference for boys over girls. However, China did not have a skewed-sex ratio until they introduced the one-child policy and forced women to abort their girl babies. So abortion really did cause the skewed ratio in that country, as well as in India.

The ultimate flaw in Arthur's stance is putting the woman first. Abortion is not just about the woman; the reason why abortion is so hotly contested is precisely because that "lump of tissue" is someone else. And that bothers everyone, both pro-choice and pro-life. It bothers pro-lifers because they see this as the ultimate violation of civil rights; one cannot have any rights without the right to life. And abortion takes that right away, decided by the very person who should be the protector of that life. And it bothers pro-choicers because they keep saying that it is not a human being, that it doesn't matter, but the fact that this issue does not go away, proves the very opposite.

This video was taken outside First Assembly of God Church in Ventura, CA. Todd Bullis had approached several churches in the Ventura area, asking them if they were doing any pro-life work. When he learned that most had no outreach to crisis pregnancy centres and were not speaking out about abortion, he felt called to rebuke them.

Now, you may not like what Todd does: which is to display graphic images of aborted babies at the entrance to the church on Sunday morning, as people arrive for the service. And many do not like this approach. In fact, Todd was sprayed with vinegar by an off-duty policeman, who then took a hose and hosed Todd until he was soaked, an act for which he received no punishment from the city police.

This video makes us all uncomfortable but it is worth reading the account by Tom Ambrose, who decided to investigate whether Todd's allegations of inaction on the part of the church were correct. You can read Tom's account here

Whether you agree with Todd's methods or not, it cannot be disputed that churches are silent on the greatest holocaust in human history - the war on the unborn. I would love to hear if any church does speak out about abortion, please let me know. Because it would be good to hear some good news on this.

Sadly, most pastors and priests are so uncomfortable with the issue of abortion, that they cannot even mention the word. I believe that the truth lies in the fact that we, as Christians, have accepted the immorality of our society and we have bought into the majority view that sexual activity is something private, that no one can speak about. Yet, millions of innocent children are put to death to keep the "sin" of sexual immorality quiet, and millions of men and women are scarred by the results of that sin.

The price of silence, we haven't any idea how high it is, but God will not be mocked forever. We will be called to account for every life that has been terminated by our complicity in "choice".

They forgot the God who saved them; who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So he said he would destroy them - had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.... they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshipped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves.Therefore the Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance. He handed them over to the nations, and their foes ruled over them and subjected them to their power. Many times he delivered them but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin. But he took note of their distress when he heard their cry; for their sake he remembered his covenant and out of his great love he relented. - Psalm 106

So who is our Moses today? who will stand in the gap and cry out to the Lord for mercy? who will call the people to repentance? Todd Bullis is one for sure.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A second woman is now in jail for interfering with women who are having abortions. This one is Mary Wagner, a young woman, recently returned from four years in a convent in France, and she has been speaking to women and men at abortion clinics in Toronto. For that, she got arrested.

My initial reaction is one of joy. Mary is incarcerated at the same facility as Linda Gibbons who has spent more than 8 of the past 15 years in jail for violating the "bubble zone" outside the abortion clinic on Gerrard Street in Toronto. Not that the two women will get to talk to each other, but the very fact that they are there together gives them a solidarity that speaks volumes.

And for an issue that Jean Chretien said "was decided" in this country, it is evident that the abortion issue will not simply "go away". On the contrary, we are seeing more about abortion in the past few months than we have seen in years. People ask why that is, I am absolutely convinced that it is the result of prayer.

For 40 years, pro-lifers have been praying for an end to legalized abortion in both Canada and the US. And there have been many faithful prayer warriors throughout those years. But I do think the advent of 40 Days for Life has added a new dimension. This movement has mobilized thousands of pro-life people to join the prayer to end abortion, people who never dared to be public on this issue before. And I believe that we are seeing the silence being broken in this country. As David Bereit says, praying publicly for an end to abortion brings about a "constructive tension" within society, and that kind of tension is precisely what is required to bring about change.

What will happen now, I have no idea. I couldn't have foreseen this young woman returning from France and getting arrested for being pro-life. But whatever the Lord has in store, I am sure that we will all be caught by surprise as God seems to like to do end-runs around tough situations.

Further investigation reveals that Mary is no stranger to jail. She has been there a few times before, the first in 1999 when she was arrested at the Bagshaw Clinic in Vancouver. She later spent two months in jail for violating the "bubble zone" outside the Bagshaw Clinic. Italics are mine, just wanted to be sure that line wouldn't be missed.

While in the Burnaby Correction Centre for Women, Mary was able to talk to other prisoners, about 90 per cent of whom she says have aborted at least one child. One woman confided that she wished someone like Mary was there to offer her hope and friendship when she had aborted her child. She informed women who still suffered from the abortions they went through that post-abortion counselling is available and distributed post-abortion syndrome literature.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The subject of sex-selection abortions is a troublesome one. I should have realised when Ezra Levant advised Andrea Mrozek that the way to tackle pro-choicers was on this very issue, he was onto something. After all, Ezra Levant knows how to win a fight.

Today'sarticle in the National Post, by Kelly McParland, takes on the issue. As McParland states:

Why, then, would abortion proponents object to women having abortions because they don't like the sex of the fetus? If a fetus is not human, a woman has the right to abort it for whatever reason she chooses. - Putting Abortion Advocates in a Box, by Kelly McParland, National Post, April 13, 2010

And this article by Peter Hitchens in The Daily Mail April 10 paints a deplorable picture of China, where abortion and, in particular, sex-selection abortion, has produced a country facing a problematic imbalance in the number of boys versus girls.

FYI - Peter Hitchens is the brother of Christopher Hitchens, the very vocal atheist much in the news lately. In fact, the two brothers debate one another. Peter is a Christian by the way.

In the cruel old China, baby girls were often left to die in the gutters. In the cruel modern China, they are aborted by the tens of millions, using all the latest technology.

There is an ugly new word for this mass slaughter: gendercide.Thanks to a state policy which has limited many families to one child since 1979, combined with an ancient and ruthless prejudice in favour of sons, the world's new superpower is beginning the century of its supremacy with an alarming surplus of males. - Peter Hitchens, Gendercide: China's Shameful Massacre of Unborn Girls

Imagine this conversation:Girl seeking abortion: "I just can't have a baby right now, my boyfriend (husband) has left, I am alone.""I have two more years of school to finish. I can't support a baby right now, and I might not finish my year if I am pregnant.""I was raped, and I don't want to carry a baby that will remind me of this for the rest of my life."

One can sympathize with anyone who said any of those things; not that any of those is sufficient reason to end someone's life, but one can feel empathy for the girl in these cases. But imagine this statement:

"I just had an ultrasound and this is a girl. I don't want a girl, I just want a boy, so I will have an abortion."

Pretty difficult to feel any sympathy for this woman. While in the other instances, discrimination against the unborn on the basis of his/her inconvenient appearance in one's life is not readily apparent, in the case of sex-selection, the discrimination is simply too blatant to be overlooked.

So Ezra Levant is right; sex-selection abortion is the weak link in the pro-abort argument. This is an opportunity not to be missed. Because, if pro-choicers support abortion as a woman's right, then they are forced to support abortion for sex selection. After all, if the fetus is not a human being, what difference does it make that more girls than boys are being aborted?

Update: This article in LifeSiteNews, with an inane response from Joyce Arthur, the most pro-abort voice in Canada.

Joyce Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, told the National Post that Leier and Thiele's recommendations would be ineffective because of the easy availability of gender tests. She argued that Canadians should focus on changing attitudes that are against girls instead of limiting abortion.

"To restrict people's freedoms, withholding information in that way, I think is unethical and unnecessary and is not going to prevent anything," she said. "It's a little bit paternalistic and authoritarian." - LifeSiteNews, April 13, 2010

Really, Joyce, let's just change 3000 years of Chinese attitude as you say. Spoken like a western feminist who has very little understanding of the world at large.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

In the news lately, there have been plenty of items about the promotion in schools of tolerance toward homosexuality. School sex-ed programs have been rewritten to be homosexual-friendly, students are informed that inclining towards homosexual behaviour is perfectly normal, and some schools have even gone so far as to provide washrooms for trans-gendered individuals.

This agenda is being promoted at younger and younger ages; children as young as five and six years of age are being taught not to be homophobic. What we are seeing is the result of a creeping agenda by homosexual activists to make their lifestyle accepted by the entire population.

This was outlined in the book After the Ball, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. They were educated gay men who realised that getting society to accept the gay lifestyle would mean clever machinations to make that lifestyle seem normal.

When you're very different, and people hate you for it, this is what you do: first you get your foot in the door, by being as similar as possible; then, and only then - when your one little difference is finally accepted - can you start dragging in your other peculiarities, one by one. You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As the saying goes, allow the camel's nose beneath your tent, and his whole body will soon follow." - After the Ball, Kirk and Madsen, p. 146

Bill Whatcott is a man who has fought this encroachment of homosexuality upon Canadian culture and, in particular, the Saskatchewan school system. He has faced the Human Rights Commission and been fined $17,500 for distributing flyers that spoke against abortion and homosexual behaviour. Whatcott has credentials; raised in foster homes, he was addicted to glue sniffing by the age of 18 and turned to gay prostitution to support himself. A dramatic conversion to Christianity changed his life; from having spent time in jail, to obtaining a practical nursing license, to running for political office, this guy has seen a lot. He is currently preparing to visit the province of Quebec this summer to distribute flyers in that province, flyers that illustrate graphically the results of the homosexual lifestyle. And he is prepared for what that may bring, and I am sure it will bring legal repercussions as speaking against homosexual behaviour is simply not tolerated in the land where "tolerance" reigns supreme.

It strikes me that it doesn't take very much sleuthing to determine that living a homosexual lifestyle poses significant health risks. The findings are too gross for me to list here, I will simply give you a link to Whatcott's latest flyer

In a link to his flyer that he will distribute in Quebec this summer, Whatcott said that 79% of active homosexuals have the HPV virus. Note that this virus is incurable. This is the virus that health departments have been trying to innoculate young girls against with Gardisil, a vaccine that has produced 49 deaths in the US alone.

This virus produces warts in the genitalia, as well as infections in the mouth of those who perform oral sex. It is also the virus that can cause cervical cancer in women. Talk about gross. As horrible as this sounds and looks, this is information that needs to be passed around. People's lives are at stake.

So I am wondering, if children are being taught in school that homosexuality is okay and that it is perfectly normal to grow up and be a practising homosexual, why aren't their parents taking the school board to court? After all, if your child's teacher was saying that cigarette smoking was alright, even though we know the health risks involved from smoking, there would be a gigantic opposition to such teaching. Why is the teaching of tolerance towards homosexuality accepted? It can be shown, in study after study, that homosexual behaviour exposes one to all sorts of health risks that can be avoided by simply not taking part in that kind of sexual activity.

Time is of the essence here; our freedoms and rights are being eroded at an astonishing pace; parents, more than any other members of society, need to take action and protect their children against this indoctrination by the gay agenda. We are not talking about tolerance here, we are talking about life and death. The homosexual activists seem to have gone beyond the fear of death in their pursuit of their goal; they no longer seem to care that their lifestyle brings ill health and death to so many; they really do seem to be bent upon suicide.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

I guess you could say that I feel depressed. Funny because Easter is supposed to be the celebration that makes the Christian life all worthwhile, but this year I just feel downhearted.

Several things have contributed to this malaise of spirit. Beginning with the pro-life group in our parish that just doesn't seem to have any spunk, and keeps getting its suggested activities vetoed by the pastor, to reading the 40 Days emails and regretting that we didn't have a vigil this time around, to my current reading material. It all contributes to feeling distinctly depressed.

I do realise that, since I have been following this course of reading, I have encountered more facts than most people want to deal with. Plus my daily blog reading centers around sites that carry the latest pro-life news, which is generally not uplifting. But it is the book that is most to blame, I believe.

I am reading Fighting for Life, written by Father Paul Marx the founder of Human Life International; it appears to be the second book in his autobiography, beginning with a trip to Canada in February 1988. Statements such as "the church in Canada, especially in Quebec, has degenerated worse than in any other nation except Holland" don't exactly make one feel better about the situation in this country. When I see the pro-life movement in the US and compare it to what we see in Canada, it is truly disheartening. Canada seems to have simply acquiesced in the promotion of evil. From a Catholic prime minister, Trudeau, who sold out his values when he legalized abortion to our bishops who issued the Winnipeg Statement, in which they said they would not follow Pope Paul VI's teaching on birth control, the situation in Canada seems beyond redemption. Of course, nothing is impossible with God, but that is exactly what it will take to change the course of events in this my native land.

Recent news tell of educational agendas to teach kids about sex, contraception, homosexuality, etc, but I didn't know that the seeds of this were planted way back in the 80's. The bishops have promoted feminism; they seem to have been hand-in-hand with Trudeau throughout all of this. I remember my father being extremely anti-Trudeau and, in retrospect, I now wonder what he was reading that he knew what was being mandated in the country. The Canadian bishops produced a set of discussion papers to advance the role of women in the church, they were entitled the "Green Kit" (nothing to do with the Green movement of today, but ironic nonetheless). My dear friend Father Joseph Hattie, O.M.I., published A Critique of the "Green Kit", wherein he exposed the many discrepancies, the witchcraft, the unbelievable feminist bibliography, the demands of a false equality, and the consequences of this militant, secular feminism, which was outlined by Betty Friedan in 1973. The feminists' objective, according to Father Hattie, is

to invade aggressively all areas of life (where men hold power). Thus she (Friedan) says: The changes necessary to bring about equality (exclusively in terms of women's-liberation theology) are very revolutionary indeed. They involve a sex-role revolution which will restructure all our institutions: childbearing, education, marriage, the family, medicine, work, politics, the economy, religion, psychological theory, human sexuality, morality, and the very evolution of the race.-Fighting for Life, by Father Paul Marx

Father Marx recounts the manoeverings of many feminist nuns, in collusion with liberalized clergy, all working to undermine the role of the Church in Canadian society. And they surely have succeeded. And the result is a culture bereft of the values that keep society together, along with a distrust of the Church. This is happening everywhere, but Father Marx cites Canada as being in the forefront of this secularizing movement. Depressing indeed.

Accounts of the take-over of the educational system to advance the homosexual agenda are quite disturbing. In case we think that this is new, it was being planned and promoted in the 80's if not before. And the bishops went along with it, producing and promoting brochures on sex education that promoted "safe" sex rather than abstinence. One does not have to look very far to find out why the Church is now so silent on these issues and so soft on moral issues in general; because the leaders sold out decades ago. When they should have been outspoken on the issues of chastity, marital fidelity, contraception, abortion, they were silent for the most part and now they have no credibility to speak on any of those issues.

It remains for the laity to assume the responsibility and it is my hope that they will. News resources such as LifeSiteNews, the Interim, Catholic Insight are life lines in the sea of moral permissiveness.

Father Joe Hattie, OMI

And tomorrow, when I see Father Hattie at the Rosary walk in front of the hospital, I will thank him for his vision and for his faithfulness to that vision. He is a most unassuming man, but don't be fooled. Behind that quiet exterior beats the heart of a true man of God. I thank God for him.